I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us.

Russian lake disappears, baffling villagers
19 May 2005 16:56:21 GMT
Source: Reuters
MOSCOW, May 19 (Reuters) - A Russian village was left baffled on Thursday after its lake disappeared overnight.

NTV television showed pictures of a giant muddy hole bathed in summer sun, while fishermen from the village of Bolotnikovo looked on disconsolately.

"It is very dangerous. If a person had been in this disaster, he would have had almost no chance of survival. The trees flew downwards, under the ground," said Dmitry Zaitsev, a local Emergencies Ministry official interviewed by the channel.

Officials in Nizhegorodskaya region, on the Volga river east of Moscow, said water in the lake might have been sucked down into an underground water-course or cave system, but some villagers had more sinister explanations.

"I am thinking, well, America has finally got to us," said one old woman, as she sat on the ground outside her house.

David Cross reams Pitchfork, ON Pitchfork

http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/features/artistlists/c/cross_david-05/

Ostensibly about a young girl who loses her shoes in a cockfight she mistakenly attends during Thanksgiving 1959, it's really about the universal themes of loss, angst, candy and damp clothing. Taking its cue from the early commercial work of Deloite and Hughey and filtering it through the "I cut myself shaving" piousness of Throm Tillson, Pillow Logic re-works early sock hop chop flop and allows people like me to enjoy enjoying it.

A woman for our times

Sandra Bridewell, the world's most successful sociopath.

powerpoint for guerilla snipers

Maybe they should have used the "Communicating Bad News" template

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/001559.html

http://www.military.com/ppt/iraqi_insurgent_sniper_training.htm

The actual PowerPoint is here: http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/ppt/iraqi_insurgent_sniper_training.ppt

via Defense and the National Interest.

Geek note

Mac OS X does have Java 5, they just don't have it on the Tiger disk.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301073

With this I shall defeat General Bievous.

The Lightsaber Spoon you get in a box of Honey Smacks with Samuel L. Jackson on it. Highly recommended. Props to rpkrajewski for the tip.

Patio maniac #32352: the 30something counselor guy with the old laptop and the staring eyes.

Tonight on the patio we were BSing with Angel and she pointed out this guy whose name I don't know, but who has been at D's constantly for years. All I know about him is that he's some kind of government psychiatric worker. She said he had been constantly staring at her for three years. (Angel is 19.)

Admittedly Angel is not only pretty, but the kind of pretty that guys stare at. She's aware of this and a pleasant tolerant sort of person so she doesn't sweat it usually.

But, the whole three years of staring thing was bad. He only had spoken to her once, not there but at a random gas station encounter, and he asked her out and she said no.

My only observation about the guy is that he rarely spoke and is pretty tightly wrapped, and occasionally does peculiar things, like recently when he sprinted after some pyramid scheme dorks who were selling tooth whitener in order to make sure to get their sales pitch before they left. Anyway.

After about 20 minutes of intense staring, he came over and made small talk with her tonight, not acknowledging any of the other friends of hers sitting at the table. I was just about to over-effusively introduce myself when he finally left.

Counselor/stalker guy had a girlfriend for about a week recently and they were all cuddly, but I haven't seen her for a couple weeks. Hope she's not in the crawl space.